Issues

21Oct By VidyaNo Comments

Issue 7 – October 2018

पुस्तकों से प्रेम: इन चार विद्यार्थियों के लिए ऑक्सीजन समान है पुस्तकालय

एक शांत कमरा, ढ़ेर सारी किताबें, कई लोग, फिर भी चुप - कुछ याद आया? जी हाँ! मैं बात कर रहा हूँ किताबों से भरे उस कमरे की जिसे "पुस्तकालय" या लाइब्रेरी कहते हैं। अपने स्कूल या कॉलेज के दौरान हम सभी कई बार पुस्तकालय गए होंगे। किताबें युवावर्ग की सबसे अच्छी मित्र हैं। जिस तरह एक व्यक्ति अपने मित्र की सहायता हर पल, हर घड़ी और हर मुश्किल में साथ देता है। वैसे ही किताबें भी हर विषम परिस्थिति में मनुष्य की सहायक होती हैं । पुस्तकालय की पुस्तकों में हर मुश्किल सवाल, हर परिस्थिति का हल छुपा होता है, मनुष्य भले ही किसी दुविधा में रहे। पुस्तकों को पढ़ने से मानव की सोच का विस्तार होता है। और ज्ञान की प्राप्ति से मानव हर समस्या का आसानी से निधान कर सकता है। इसलिए  पुस्तकालय युवावर्ग के लिए अत्यंत महत्वपूर्ण है। औसत वर्ग का व्यक्ति अपनी रूचि या ज़रुरत की सभी महँगी किताबें नहीं खरीद पाता है और पैसे के अभाव ...

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19Oct By Beena ChoksiNo Comments

Issue 7 – October 2018

On The Same Page

Being able to criss-cross the globe on the strength of the Internet has made it possible to engage with creative ideas, conversations, and experiences which otherwise would be beyond our reach—and at times, even beyond our imagination.  On The Same Page will bring to the reader of Torchlight, a combination of textual-audio-visual curated content, about and around libraries and bookish love. Shape-shifting Libraries 1986 FIFA World Cup Mexico quarter final. An audacious “Hand of God” goal scored by legendary Diego Maradona against England, makes football history. For the uninitiated—the goal that Maradona scored against the formidable English team remains controversial; some saw it as divine intervention while others thought of it as plain foul play. The goal was scored by sleight of hand...

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19Oct By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Issue 7 – October 2018

A Youthful Readerly Problem

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25Jul By Jyoti SahiNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

Relation of  Word to Image

The relation of word to image is the origin of writing. A visual symbol or icon, that carries with it an association with a word, is called a pictograph. The pictograph is rather like what today we might term a “logo” which a designer creates to give a specific “identity” to some product. The Mohenjodaro seals are another example of a pictograph. From ancient times until the present day some artists, particularly in the Far East, use personal handcrafted seals as a way of “signing” their creations. Letters for Tagore had a character of their own. They were in a way his “signature”, representing his unique personality. Seals have often shown the way to linking the word to an image. A seal cannot be just simply de-coded as a system like a word composed by letters of the alphabet. A seal is...

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25Jul By Nina SabnaniNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

Telling Gandhi’s Story

The story that I am going to tell is about the way we made the illustrated book ‘My Gandhi Story’, published by Tulika Publishers in 2014. By ‘we’, I mean Radhika Menon, Rajesh Vengad Chaity, Ankit Chadha, Sunaina Suneja and I. The story begins like this: When Tulika publishers asked me to do an illustrated book on Gandhi for children in collaboration with the Warli artist Rajesh Vengad Chaity, I panicked. It was not because I had never collaborated with traditional artists before; on the contrary, I had worked with embroidery artists from Kutch and Kaavad makers from Rajasthan to make animated films and illustrated books for children but my approach had always been more ethnographic. I would interact with them and together we would arrive at the images and text. In this case, the artist ...

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25Jul By Kamlesh Chandra JoshiNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

चित्र पुस्तकों द्वारा बच्चों में कला के प्रति रुझान विकसित करना ........

स्कूल पुस्तकालय की चित्रों से सजी पुस्तकें बच्चों में पढ़ने की उत्सुकता जगाने में अहम भूमिका निभाती हैं | इन किताबों के चित्र पाठ्य को कल्पनात्मक विस्तार देते हैं, सौंदर्यबोध जगाते हैं और बच्चों के पढ़ने के शुरूआती दौर में अनुमान लगाकर पढ़ने में मदद भी करते हैं | स्कूल पुस्तकालय संचालित करने का एक महत्वपूर्ण उद्देश्य है  - बच्चों को उत्साही पाठक बनाना | पाठक बनने का मतलब है कि बच्चे पढ़ने का आनंद लें; उनमें चित्रों के प्रति सौंदर्यबोध विकसित हो | इसके लिए स्कूल के पुस्तकालय में एक शिक्षक या पुस्तकालय संचालक की भूमिका महत्वपूर्ण होती है कि वह बच्चों के साथ किताबों का उपयोग करते हुए इन दोनों ही पहलुओं पर ध्यान रखें | अकसर स्कूलों में देखने को मिलता है कि बच्चों को किताबें पढ़ने को दी जाती हैं लेकिन चित्रों को गौर से देखने और उन पर बातचीत पर बहुत ही कम ध्यान दिया जाता है | यह बात कई विद्यालयों मे...

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25Jul By Liz KempNo Comments

Issue 6 – July 2018, Spotlight

Literally Art - Words and Images

There is a long established connection between books and art in the form of the familiar graphic illustrations that give visual life to a written concept and help to illuminate elements of a story or poem with colour, shape and form. The skill of the illustrator is one of interpretative inspiration and, not wishing to push alliteration too far, also one of personal insight, sentiment and experience. Books create pictures in the human mind - complex scenes of imagined places, times, conversations, memories and images are conjured into being through the power of words to create cognitive landscapes that are as much about the reader as the writer and the life experiences that shape the individual. This article is a little about the creative use of text in the drawing (Guided Drawing) and the...

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25Jul By Jennifer Thomas1 Comment

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Mama, let’s read two stories!

“Mama, let’s read two stories!” This is a familiar refrain from my 4 year old, Z who insists on a picture book read aloud every night before going to bed. He dislikes going to bed. So he tries to prolong his waking hours by insisting we read at least two stories. In these nightly rituals which mark the close of yet another day, Z sees and says unexpected things, opening for me a small window into the world of how children learn to read.  He often doesn’t respond to pictures as I expect him to but he listens carefully as he is later able to retrieve new information to make connections with his own lived world. In our shared reading of picture books, I realize I’m doing much more than narrating a single story to him. I’m opening up possibilities of endless connections and multiple stories f...

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25Jul By Jane Sahi1 Comment

Issue 6 – July 2018

Preface to Issue 6

The theme of this issue of Torchlight is ’Library and Art’. We have explored this theme from a number of unusual and fresh angles: some of the articles are related to education; some, are connected tangentially to libraries but all are linked to art in one form or another. Jyoti Sahi discusses explicitly how words and images are inextricably linked and both are rooted in how we experience the material world. Nina Sabnani describes how the collaboration of artists of many kinds  -  a traditional painter, an illustrator, a designer, a story-teller and an inspired publisher -  came together to create a book that blends seamlessly so many elements and gifts. Liz Kemp explores how words can generate images which in turn give rise to words.  She describes her gentle and ‘fluid’ facilitation of ...

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23Jul By Samina MishraNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Turning the Pages: Sherna Dastur and the Art of Making Books

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22Jul By Rhea D' SouzaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Guided Drawing

For the video, we used a translated version of 'The Night of Glowing Sembar‘ from the 'Night Life of Trees‘ by Tara Books. The process of the guided drawing is here. Participants of the 'guided drawing' are requested to sit comfortably (in a circle in this case so that they could share the stationery) and silently listen to the story that will guide their drawings. Instructions on how to use the colours and any doubts are addressed at this point.  The stationery ( soft pastel & oil pastel colours and A1/A2 Cartridge sheets) should also be laid out by this time. Once the story read aloud begins, the participants must concentrate only on the text of the story. They may close their eyes. ( Additional instrumental /ambient music pertaining to the text may also play in the ...

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22Jul By Venantius J PintoNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

This world of dew is only the world of dew— and yet . . . oh and yet . . .  Kobayashi Issa (小林 一茶, 1763 – 1828) Translated by Sam Hamill

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22Jul By Milan KhanolkarNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Dolls as Artifactual Literacy

Notes from a conversation with Milan The domain of artifactual literacy is of growing interest. It brings together material culture and literacy. The ‘stuff’ of culture is understood as a valid and powerful form of meaning-making. Milan Khanolkar, a Goan artist opens up the notion of a text as something beyond the printed and even spoken word. It gives us an insight into how story-making can be multimodal and how texts can be woven in diverse ways. Bookworm has published her children’s book, Bindi Su. Milan has also worked on documenting stories from the rich oral tradition of certain Konkani speaking coastal communities. Even from childhood, I was fascinated by dolls – not the dolls that you could buy from the market but the ones that I could make myself. I wanted to make my own creati...

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21Jul By Aniruddha SenGupta2 Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Stand Up, Comics!

The graphic book genre has taken interesting baby steps in India in the past decade Given that my brothers and I were even as young children heavily into reading, it's difficult to fathom what may have prompted my father – a reasonably typical Bengali middle-class man, a government servant – to start plying us with Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), Classics Illustrated and Tintin comics. The most likely explanation was that they were meant as sources of inspiration for my brother Orijit (at the time still spelt the 'official' way, Arijit), who had shown a prodigious talent for art at a very young age. Whatever it was, it paved a path of exploration for us that we have continued to travel on into our adulthood. If anything, Orijit has even been something of a trailblazer, as far as India is concern...

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21Jul By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

A Comic Readerly Problem

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17Jul By Junuka DeshpandeNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Listening to Images: The Experience of Working with Tactile Illustrations

A few months ago, I had an opportunity to create a visual book that completely challenged my way of seeing, imaging, visualising and making. I must say that the learning has taken me towards a way of engaging with the design that is intuitive, hands-on and poetic. This is simply because, the constraint was big- the images I create, will not be seen! The book was meant to be for visually impaired children and my usual way of approaching ‘image’ from a perspective of the visually able world would not have worked. This triggered a question, what is an image then, if it is not to be seen by eyes? An image lives in the realm of the seen world. Much about its existence, interpretation and function relies on the visual perception of its maker and the viewer. At the same time, it is also an exper...

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14Jul By Samina MishraNo Comments

Chiaroscuro, Issue 6 – July 2018

Ten Books and a Journey

Bookshelves are windows into family histories – which books find a home on the shelves, how the stacks are organised, which books are well-worn, and unopened, the ideas contained in the inscriptions. Family bonds form in different ways and for book-lovers, the web of stories that spreads out across their bookshelves is one way. In my bookshelves, there are many webs and one is a messy web that started to take shape as I began my role in child-rearing, a role that comes to a sort of end this year. I will always be a parent but Imran, my son, is no longer a child. At 16, he is about to embark on one of his first completely independent journeys - finishing high school far away from home, weaving webs that will grow on his independent book-shelves. There is a line that Marquez wrote in one of...

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27Apr By Sujata Noronha2 Comments

Issue 5 – April 2018, Spotlight

Bookish Love? Bah!

Love Books! Books are Lovely! We Must Love Books! And now… Bookish love! Where is this stream of ideas about love and books being birthed? And how do these ideas flow into dominant talk? Who dare says, “Bookish love - huh?! Humbug!” And who is brave enough to cast this stone as naysayers? What has bookish love done for humanity and what has bookish love or love for books or any combination of the words ‘love and books’ done for those who do not read and declare that they do not like the act of reading? Where is the space for those of us who struggle with the written word in languages we barely understand?  For those of us who have never seen anyone with their heads buried in a book, unless within the classroom and closely watched? Can any of us raise our heads and hands and say, 'we con...

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27Apr By Dashrath SharmaNo Comments

Issue 5 – April 2018, Spotlight

किताबों से प्यार

जब मैं अपनी पिछली जिन्दगी में झाँकता हुँ (वैसे अभी ज्यादा गुजरी नही हैं) तो मुझे लगता हैं कि मैरे अकेलेपन के दिनों में कोई मेरा सच्चा साथी रहा हैं तो वो हैं किताबें। शुरू से ही किताबें खरीदने और पढ़ने का शौक काफी रहा। किताबें और खुद के बनाए हुए नोट्स संभालकर रखने की लगन इतनी प्रगाढ थी कि परिक्षा समाप्त होने के बाद जब हिसाब लगाते थे तो पता चलता था कि एक बोरा भरकर किताबें और रजिस्टर जमा हो गए हैं। कच्चा घर होने के कारण ज्यादा किताबें तो संभालकर नही रख पाया परन्तु फिर भी लगभग काफी किताबें सुरक्षित मिल जायेगी। सरकारी विद्यालय में पढ़ने के कारण हमें किताबें निःषुल्क मिल जाया करती थी या घर वाले किसी रिष्तेदार भाई-बहिन (जो मुझसे एक कक्षा आगे जा चुके थे) की दिलवा देते थे। मुझे पहली किताब कक्षा छः के दौरान खरीदने का मौका मिला, वो भी घर वालो से काफी जिद करके तथा पाँचवी में अच्छे प्रतिषत अंक प्राप्त ह...

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27Apr By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar1 Comment

Issue 5 – April 2018, Spotlight

My Bookish Desires

Two books roused desire in me while I was in school, an adolescent. These books were Jean Webster’s novel, ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’, and Danielle Steel’s novel, ‘Wings’. Desire, while in school, was a mushy thing that seemed to melt inside my being or break out of a fist-sized, fist-shaped cage and flow out freely, leaving an elation in its wake. I was in school in the 1990s. Years later, in mid-2000s, when I saw on TV the advertisement of the chocolate lava cake of Domino’s Pizza – thick, lava-like, deep brown chocolate flowing out of a crusty, baked object – I felt that that desire that I felt in school was the same like this viscous, lava-like chocolate. With each book, with each kind of desire I felt, each layer of that cake crumbled. Both the books I mentioned are different from one another...

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